Capitalist Corner

October 30, 2006

Conceptions of Government

Do try and wrap your mind around this. Republicans believe the federal government is a bureaucratic, moribund, and ineffective institution. They deride Democrats for thinking it can achieve not only the seemingly impossible, but the moderately difficult. They also believe it can stop 20-29 year olds from having sex. I didn't think armed guards bristling with tranquilizer guns could do that.

Comments

The modern GOP is intellectually bankrupt and hypocritical. Even though the popular image of a tax-and-spend Democrat is just another Republican fantasy, at least Democrats are able to run on their actual platform and, when elected, govern the way they said they would.

If the GOP had followed through with their anti-government rhetoric and dramatically shrunk the feds - not to mention the state govts they have controlled - it would have pissed me off, but I at least could have respected the integrity of it.

At any rate, trying to get 20-29-year-olds to not have sex is way more intrusive than a retirement program or restrictions on clear-cutting forests.

Every single time something like this comes up, the people criticizing the program--at least the ones who get quoted in news stories--just insist that it "won't work." Which is true, but how come no one ever just criticizes it as just being a bad idea? Twentysomethings should be having sex. Yay sex.

(I think Yglesias did come down on the right side of this issue a while back. Credit where due.)

Posted by: Christopher M | Oct 31, 2006 3:38:36 AM

Perhaps the Repubs who wrote that line were reflecting on their own cold and lonely twenties. It would explain an awful lot.

(P.S. Forgive me, but it should be Do try to wrap your mind, as opposed to try and.)

Example-Look at Harold Ford's campaign in TN, commercials from churches, campaign cards with the 10 Commandments on them, claiming he will not raise taxes, says he will not pull out of Iraq, and so on. In his campaign commercials, he won't even say he is a Democrat! He knows that 'Democrat' is almost as bad of a word as 'liberal' in some places. Do you call that running on the Democratic platform?

I don't think the Republicans are much better(spending, gov't size, border control, fighting Iraq war like a bunch of pussies, etc.), but they are the lesser of the two evils. Kind of like the choice between eating haggis(Republicans) and a pile of shit(Democrats).

Posted by: Captain Toke | Oct 31, 2006 8:52:19 AM

I know, Captain Toke, it's sad how liberals won't admit that they want to burn down all the churches and then have gay orgies with terrorists in the ashes. But you have to admit that the Republicans are almost as bad. After all, when was the last time you saw a conservative politician admit that they want to grind poor people into pâté to be served at billionaire Klan rallies? It's a sad state this country is in.

He knows that 'Democrat' is almost as bad of a word as 'liberal' in some places.

It's been like that for a while though, hasn't it. Why, I remember when Newt Gingrich (D-GA) put "liberal" on the same list as "betray", "corrupt", and "sick". Sad, sad, sad.

Posted by: Victor Freeh | Oct 31, 2006 9:45:15 AM

This campaign for twentysomething chastity ought to begin with the President's junior staff, as well as the unmarried staff members of senators and congressmen who support the promotion. Those unmarried staffers should publicly swear chastity oaths. Lead by example, I say.

Why the surprise? For the last 25 years Republicans have been telling me that Gummint is inherently incapable of running public schools and delivering the mail (they kept the faithful informed through direct mail, natch). In the last 10 years the very same people have said, with a straight face, that the same Gummint is perfectly capable of conducting social engineering on a national scale in a profoundly alien culture half a world away. "Intellectual bankruptcy" doesn't begin to cover the fundamental cognitive incoherence of right-wing "thought". And this spills over into territory covered in Mr. Klein's next thread, the bloodlust that so many our contemporary "conservatives" wallow in. As long as we have an enemy, we can avoid looking too closely at the shabbiness of our own thought. Right-wingers were really cut adrift by the end of the Cold War. Osama gave them purpose. Making sense is secondary to feeling good.

Posted by: sglover | Oct 31, 2006 11:46:31 AM

litbrit: "try and" is a nice colloquialism and perfectly at home in a blog post, which need not be super-formal prose. Why you gotta hate?

Posted by: Christopher M | Oct 31, 2006 11:50:11 AM

If they convince people to walk around asking people if they've accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, that might work. It's a pretty solid way to run off the possibility of sex.

"try and" is a nice colloquialism and perfectly at home in a blog post, which need not be super-formal prose. Why you gotta hate?

My goodness, no-one is hating here, but very well, I'll bite: while not exactly a colloquialism (a word or phrase that isn't used in formal speech or writing), using and in place of to in an auxiliary verb + infinitive verb construct is really a grammar error, albeit one that is so common, it usually passes unnoticed (and uncriticized) when spoken; when written, like it or not, it's a departure from standard English.

Substitute another auxiliary verb for try and you'll see what I mean:

Endeavor and wrap your head...

Attempt and wrap your head...

I'd hardly argue that grammar errors signify the coming of the Apocalypse, but I would point out that when errors become so commonplace as to overtake proper usage, it becomes increasingly difficult for those who teach English to speakers of foreign languages to explain all the irregularities (of which there are already so many, thanks in part to the heterogeneous roots of our language); further, it's murder on the minds of copyeditors whose grammatical reference points are constantly shifting along with the very definition of Standard English. That's why a tiny number of us have made it our purpose in life to annoy the rest of you with these trifles.

That said, are blog posts considered speech or writing? What about comments? I'm honestly interested, because this is a fairly New World for me.

Litbrit, blogs appear to me to be informal writing, where colloquialisms are fine. Sometimes it's hard to decide whether a common usage should be regarded as colloquial or just bad. Ezra uses "ain't" occasionally, obviously recognizing that it's not standard usage for formal prose. "Try and"? I think it's fine in informal speech/writing. I was waiting for you to comment on his use of "neither" with three alternatives (in another post), but you passed on that one.

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